Re: Bug#13287: less uses /usr/bin/editor without it necessarily being there.
On 5 Oct 1997, Darren/Torin/Who Ever... wrote:
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> Christian Schwarz, in an immanent manifestation of deity, wrote:
> >But this is no bug in less but in all the editor packages that install an
> >editor but do not provide /usr/bin/editor. At least the editors in the
> >base system (I think ae and tiny-vi) should provide /usr/bin/editor.
> >Please reassign this bug to the appropriate base package.
>
> Okay. It's a bug in the dependency system since less is depending on a
> feature implemented in essential package(s) that hasn't been fulfilled
> yet. So, should this be filed against base? ae? all editors? I guess
> if someone upgrades to unstable, they get unpredictable results at
> times.
(That's why we call it "unstable" ;-)
> I'm just trying to fulfill dependencies so that the seemless
> upgrade piecemeal promised by Debian works.
>
> >Sorry, but I still don't understand your point. I totally agree with you
> >that the current situation is not nice, but this is neither a bug in the
> >policy nor in less. The bug is that the "editor" and "pager" packages have
> >not been updated to latest policy (or the maintainers simply forgot about
> >this change).
>
> The point is that there is no "editor" package and I can't file a
> dependency on one since policy specifically says I can't.
Huh? Once again, we are talking about a "bug" in all packages providing an
editor.
For example, the package "ae" definitely has to provide editor. It's
included in the base system. Thus, as soon as "ae" is updated, the
problems you mentioned should be gone.
Of course, all other editor packages need to be updated too.
Please reassign this bug to ae.
> >As soon as at least the base system provides /usr/bin/editor and
> >/usr/bin/pager, there wouldn't be a difference if someone would check the
> >env vars and fall back to /usr/bin/{editor,pager} _or_ would use
> >/usr/bin/sensible-* in the first place.
>
> But since it doesn't, there is a difference, *right now*. It's that
> sensible-editor provides a reasonable error if, for some reason,
> /usr/bin/editor doesn't exist and the envar EDITOR isn't set. editor
> doesn't. The reason /usr/bin/editor doesn't exist could also be that
> something got screwed up with update-alternatives as well.
Yes, there is a difference right now and I agree that the current
situation is not nice. We definitely should change this. But the bug is
not in the policy, it's in the packages installing the editors (and
pagers) but not providing them.
Thanks,
Chris
-- Christian Schwarz
schwarz@monet.m.isar.de, schwarz@schwarz-online.com,
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